Ministers under pressure to ban pesticides blamed for killing bees

Scottish ministers are under mounting pressure to defy
the Westminster government and back a European ban on toxic pesticides blamed
for killing bees.

A powerful coalition of environmental groups is
urging the Scottish environment secretary, Richard Lochhead, to support a move
by the European Commission to restrict the use of nicotine-based nerve agents
designed to kill insects that prevent crops from growing.

Their campaign has been backed by the Scottish
National Party MEP, Alyn Smith, who is calling on his party colleagues at
Holyrood to change their minds. To use incomplete science as an excuse for
delaying a ban is a “shoddy lobbying tactic”, he said.

So far Lochhead has steadfastly supported the UK
government’s rejection of a ban, stressing that there are “gaps” in the science
and concerns for farmers. But the Sunday Herald understands that some of his
senior officials now regard restrictions as inevitable.

Environmentalists point to more than 30 scientific
studies suggesting that the pesticides are harming bees and other wildlife, including
some from Scottish universities. Bees and other pollinating insects like
bumblebees, butterflies, moths and hoverflies are vital to the production of
food, and are reckoned to be worth £43 million a year to the Scottish economy.

Chemicals called neonicotinoids are made by
multi-national pesticide companies to paralyse insects by attacking their
nervous systems. With sales of over £1 billion a year they are the world’s most
widely used insecticide, and are applied to 10 per cent of Scotland’s
crop-growing land, mostly to protect oil seed rape.

Now a group of five environmental groups, led by the
Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT), have written to Lochhead asking him to back the
proposed European ban. It is due to be voted on by member states in Brussels in
two weeks time, and the pesticides have already been taken off the shelves by eight
leading retailers in the UK, including B&Q and Homebase.

Simon Milne, the SWT’s chief executive, said it was
“ridiculous” that Scotland and the UK were still saying that the chemicals were
safe. “What the government and industry should be doing is helping farmers move
away from neonicotinoids to a more sustainable means of pest control which is
also beneficial to wildlife,” he argued.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
(RSPB), which has recently come out in favour of a ban, warned that the damage
being done to pollinators was now apparent. “Scotland, with its varied
habitats, is home to many bee species which are now scarce and declining across
the UK,” said RSPB Scotland’s director, Stuart Housden.

“The Scottish government has a key role to play, not
least in offering its full support for the European Commission’s proposed
recommendations restricting the use of neonicotinoids.”

“I have no doubt that the Scottish
government will be more interested in putting the health of bees and our
Scottish environment first rather than allow the UK to decide for us,” he told
the Sunday Herald.

Some of the evidence was
conflicting and incomplete but there was a clear case to answer, he said.
“To use the incomplete science as grounds for
delay is just a shoddy lobbying tactic, and we owe it to Scotland's bees, and
indeed ourselves, to act now.”

The proposed ban, however, was fiercely criticised
by the Crop Protection Association, which represents the pesticide companies.
It was “a disproportionate and alarmingly
simplistic reaction to a complex problem,” said the association’s chief
executive, Nick von Westenholz.

“The reasons that there are
declines in some pollinator populations, for instance bees, are complicated and
not well understood, and include factors such as habitat loss, viruses and
parasites.

He argued that pesticides were
“vital tools” for farmers and removing them could have “serious consequences”
for their businesses and for consumer access to safe and affordable food. “This
is something that those calling for a ban seem not to recognize,” he added.

The Scottish government said its
position was informed by scientific advisers. They had highlighted “concerns
and gaps in the knowledge,” said a government spokesman.

“It is important to consider the
potential risks to bees from neonicotinoids under field conditions. We have
asked the Advisory Committee on Pesticides for further urgent advice to help
inform the Scottish government’s view on next steps.”